Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q4 and FY 2024 earnings conference call of Computer Age Management Services Limited, hosted by Orient Capital. As a reminder, all participants' lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your touchtone telephone. And I'll hand the conference over to Ms. Shivani Karwat from Orient Capital. Thank you, and over to you, miss.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Q4 FY24 earnings conference call for Computer Age Management Services Limited. As mentioned today, from the management, we have with us Mr. Anuj Kumar, Managing Director; Mr. Ramcharan SR, CFO; and Mr. Anish Sawlani, Head Investor Relations. Before we proceed to this, to start the call, I would like to give a small disclaimer that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on beliefs, opinions, and expectations of the company as on date. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict. A detailed disclaimer has also been published in the investor relations presentation, which was released to the stock exchanges. I hope everybody had a chance to go through the presentation. I will now hand over the call to Mr. Anuj Kumar, Managing Director
Thanks, everyone, and over to you, sir.
Hey, thanks, Shivani, and good morning, everyone. Appreciate all of you making the time to join the earnings call today morning. Like we do in the standard format, I will take you through presentations. Ramcharan will cover the financials over the first about 25 minutes, and then we will have the rest of the time open for Q&A. So I estimate all of you have seen the results by now. We had a very strong quarter, perhaps the strongest in the last many years. And I think the great news is that we had all cylinders firing, and I'll explain to you what that means. But we had most components of the business, whether on the mutual fund side or on the non-MF side, firing in terms of revenue growth and share.
Profits obviously followed, given the fact that, we have managed to exercise, you know, the significant prudence and controls in managing our costs. Looking at chart number 6, on the mutual fund business, you know that in the last year we've had a clean sweep. We have won every single mutual fund that decided to set up operations or business. This is Angel One, like you all know, Torus Oro and Unifi Capital. With one large mandate, whose decision has not been announced so far, we are, of course, very positively and strongly engaged there, which we will, declare in good time. These three, all of them coming to us, has been a very sweet experience.
With these three wins, the culmination is that we have an aggregate of five wins among the last seven new open mutual fund AMC bids which have happened in the country. Our mutual fund AUM has scaled sharply. It is now, at the end of the quarter, INR 37.2 trillion. This was a 10% quarterly growth and about 33% year-on-year. The overall market share stands at 68%. Equity AUM had a fantastic run. It stands at the end of the quarter at INR 19.3 trillion or INR 19.3 lakh crore. This registered almost a 50% scale-up, and all of you have been watching this number and know the constituents. So this had almost a 50% scale up.
The good news is that, our equity AUM, which is, which represents the retail part of the franchise, which represents the highest yield and therefore profit accretive component of the mutual fund business, grew ahead of the industry and continues to gain share. This gaining share has been a phenomenon for the last about 6 quarters, but it continues to stay there, which is great news and indicative of how the stacks are laid out amongst the AMCs in terms of growth of equity AUM. This then, is supported by the live SIP book, and you know that that is, one of the key things, the engine of the car, which is moving this whole thing ahead. A live SIP book grew 37%, ahead of an overall industry number of 32%.
So that was very satisfying. Then, our unique investor base crossed INR 3 crore or 30 million, and this again is a foundational metric. If you get more investors, they come into more SIPs. I think growth over the years is almost assured because this is sticky money, and they're not prone to any knee-jerk reactions. So unique investor base for CAMS serviced funds grew 25%, again, at a significant advantage over the rest of the industry, which grew 18%. On the non-mutual fund side, again, very satisfying for us because there are several components where we would describe that as Mutual Fund Plus six, and within this, most businesses scaled and scaled very well. The ones which were profitable improved profitability.
So the sustained focus has seen 2.5% or 250 basis points year-on-year growth. This was about 11% contribution to revenue last year. This quarter is 13.5, so a scale-up of about 2.5%, which we have said that we'll be happy doing 2% every year sizzle into non-MF. Do remember that non-MF has gained a bit of share despite, you know, very, very sharp run up in MF assets and significant growth in MF. So that was not an easy task, but we managed to do that. Within that, alternatives grew 20%. That is, CAMS AIF, and what Fintuple does, 32 new mandates, including several in GIFT City. CAMSPay, the payment franchise has been doing well.
We got the in principle, as you know, last year. This quarter, we got the final authorization or license to operate as a PA from RBI in Q4, which is great news during the year. We will figure out how to transition the business over time. So that has done well and has had in excess of 20% revenue growth. On the insurance side, if you read the statute, IRDAI has mandated electronic issuance of policies. Now, this does not mean a mandatory holding in EIA. What this also means is that you could, the only thing it stipulates is that physical policies will be issued only on request of the policyholder, if he specifically wants, he or she. Other than that, you can issue it in the digital locker.
You could keep it in the EIA, which is the insurance account. It could also be a PDF, which goes with an email, but it's a cut down on paper issuance. It is still not a mandatory demand, but good announcement. I think the markets are noticing, and it will give some fillip to overall momentum in creating EIAs and accruing policies in that format. KRA continues to broaden its offerings and more importantly, broaden the go-to-market. We've said that outside of mutual funds, we have now for the last about a year and a half, been focused on onboarding fintech, brokerages, you know, wealth entities, wealth advisors, investment advisors, those kind of entities. Revenue grew a stratospheric 90%, and all of this adds up to the 52% non-MF growth that you've seen.
Of course, on a small base, but very gratifying to see that part of the franchise really come out on top in terms of broad revenue growth. So in terms of highlights, just broad highlights, overall company revenue grew about 25%. MF at 21%. You've seen all of this, non-MF at 52%. Even if I yank out the Think360 contribution, which accrued to us starting April last year, if I take that out, it is still 38% on a constant basis, and with Think, that's 52%. In non-MF, the other gratifying thing is that four of the six non-MF businesses grew more than 25%. Overall, EBITDA, and you've seen the number, is at 31% year-on-year growth.
EBITDA percentage, I would say, is at 46.1%, largely given the run up in assets and in revenue. This was at about 44.8 last quarter, and we believe there is a more moderate number between 45 and 46, where it should show up in the next couple of quarters. Forty-six is slightly stratospheric. So look at it that way. PAT grew 38.7%. And then overall, PAT percentage, just like I spoke about the EBITDA percentage, is 32.2, which is 300 basis points up. Again, an exceptional quarter. We will see whether we can hold out exactly these profit margins, maybe a little slightly moderate in the coming two quarters, but all of that, all of us can watch closely. Go to the next.
I will cover chart number seven. Again, this presentation has been uploaded, so most of you have seen. I think the retail growth has played out across the board, and this plays out in gross SIP registration, where you saw that overall gross SIP registrations are almost INR 265 lakhs, so upwards of INR 2.5 crore. And when you see this is an ahead of the industry metric, 73% versus 70%, very, very foundational. If I see gross SIP sales, so when you register more gross SIPs, obviously one expectation is that you will get increased collections and increased sales. That has gone up from a 58% share to a 60% share at the bottom of the chart.
Overall increased share in SIP collections, which is 32% versus 28%. Similarly, when you see all of this leads to just an exceptional gain in equity net sales share, which has grown from 65% to 5.3. If I take the whole year, this at 75, so that's a significant scale up. This has also led to transactions growing, and when you see transactions on the top chart, INR 13 crore transactions in April to June, not too long back, less than a year back, April to June, INR 13 crore, INR 14 crore, July to September, close to INR 15.5 crore, October to December, INR 17.5 crore, January to March. So INR 13 crore growing to INR 17.5 crore, growing in excess of 30%.
What this creates is just a significant focus on getting things right. As you know, operationally, we open, like I said, we open over INR 2.5 crore new SIPs, several INR crore new folios. Everything has to go right, including making sure that every SMS is delivered, every email is delivered, every format of customer interaction is fully recorded, so it just takes humongous amount of focus to get all of these things right. It's almost an, you know, a near zero error environment. It also means that both the people capability in making the engine run and the technology capability in solving these very, very complex problems of making sure that INR 100 crore SMSs land up where they are supposed to land up.
If a couple of lags did not land up, then we have enough backups to make the investors aware of what happened to those to their transactions, either through an email. If an email doesn't work, then a voice blast or a letter. It also means a significant investment in data centers, capacity, availability, storage, processing, perimeter security, monitoring. Just think of every aspect of it. This has needed tremendous focus, tremendous investment. Just happy to share with all of you guys that that's come out very well. In my tenure, I think in the last seven or eight years, I've not seen a quarter which had just so much activity, which has significantly bolstered financial results. Next. I will quickly take you through the key businesses. On alternatives, 4Q revenue grew over 24%.
Clients continued to indicate their preference for CAMS, 32 mandates. The digital onboarding platform, WealthServ, has now ended at over 132 signups. So think of about 1,000 AIF industry. And then within that, almost, you know, over 10% of the constituents are using our digital onboarding, and they continue to scale their participation. GIFT City total client tally to 17 has scaled up a little more in the last month, but going well. We had announced, you may have seen in exchange filing, that we are setting up a larger office, which should be opening in July. The space, et cetera, is the least. We see potential, a lot of potential there, and we've hired a much larger team. So all of that will play out over the next 45-60 days.
Fintuple, so the platform integrates now custody. Custody is of the basic constituents. Then, you know, combining with both PMS and AIFs, and now they're building the capabilities for digital onboarding of FPIs and NRIs for these custody banks. So that part is going well. Fintuple has also turned at a better level, profitable last year, which is great news for that business. On payments, just a set of positive happenings. Of course, the license is one of them. In addition to that, in excess of, you know, about 20% revenue growth for the year, about 24%, across the board, over 80 new client wins. UPI AutoPay, where we were the pioneers, and now, of course, other people have learned, and they're doing the same things.
We were the pioneer in proposing UPI AutoPay as an alternate to NACH, NEFT as the way to collect SIP money. A lot of momentum there. Specifically from a PSU perspective, now you know that there's great salience in PSU. These are large clients. We have gone live with the authentication services for LIC, and then doing, you know, planning to do PG kind of work with Indian Bank, Bank of Baroda, and Canara Bank. Go to the next. KRA, I think, has perhaps been the best story. I mean, coming from a small base for the last 6 quarters, all of you have seen just fantastic results. The 10-minute KYC, and then all of these things are copyable. You know, there's nothing which someone else can't copy.
But there is an advantage in being first in the market, because that just creates salience and thought leadership in the minds of the constituents, that we can do the best job, and we can do it ahead of anyone. So we were the first to kind of bring this out, make the job of account opening much faster. You can open the account and start transacting, especially when they're not on the same day. And then, you know, all the constituents of artificial intelligence, including, you know, almost instant name match, face match, OCR, et cetera, live address check, all of that is built in. So we delivered a robust 90% year-over-year growth. Even quarterly, we grew almost 30%, 28% quarter-over-quarter. Continue to add fintechs.
I think the mutual funds are significantly penetrated. Most of our mutual funds are with us. Fintechs and brokerages, although we still don't have the first one or two names, those are expected to, at some time, start working with us, but the one or two or three top brokerages are still not there. This has happened despite that. Once we are able to crack one of the top ones, I think the results could be even sweeter. And then from a, just from a, you know, a collaboration, cooperation between Think and CAMS, and Think and CAMS, and Rep, et cetera, all continue to work closely in the market because we are not rebuilding any components which are available in the group.
I think, Think360's KYC solution, which you know has been active for public sector banks, very active, in fact, that is now acting as a front-end, and then CAMS KRA brings up the rear in all our KYC, promotional sales. On CAMSRep, we were hoping and expecting that, there could be some definitive, move towards demand. Now, as you know, in the recent announcement, that's not happened. Digital issuance, of course, has become mandatory, but that takes many things. What it has certainly done is that a lot of people, including consumers, have, read the circulars, read the news, the inquiry about EIAs... more sustained. People want to understand what's happening there. So we've crossed, we've crossed about INR 80 lakh policies. We've crossed INR 60 lakh, insurance accounts, overall, about 40% market share.
The other thing is that, Bima Central is now live. Of course, integrating insurance companies is a job and, building data exchange with them. So it is a small set of companies now, insurance companies live, but its ability to help you manage your personal data in insurance and over a period of time as regulation and market frameworks align to it, allow various things, including premium payments, renewals, lien mapping, borrowing of monies, et cetera. All of that is slated to occur on the platform, so that is a good thing. We were expecting a little more action here, which may happen in the ensuing quarters. And then, on Finserv, again, a very nice story, playing out.
You will remember two years back when we had gone live, sometime in the beginning of FY 2022, we almost had 2%-3% market share. That was a time when the brokerages hadn't adopted this. Things like on the TSP side, the PF et cetera, wasn't selling as much. It was largely a lender's market, so we were finding gaps in the fence to enter. Pleased to share with you that we now have double-digit market share. I've shown this figure in the past to you. The numbers scaled to about 13% in a hyper-competitive market with a lot of incumbency, and incumbency wasn't ours, it was someone else's. To scale to 13% was sweet. F&O account opening, most people tend to prefer us .
We continue to onboard high-quality, many, customers in this area. We have the largest number of live SIPs. This is a nice selling point because SIPs are the ones giving data. If you have large SIPs, you become large number of SIPs, you become intrinsically attractive to anyone who's trying to pull data, so that's a nice metric to have on our side. So, again, I think while revenues are still very small, it is perhaps not, you know, not worthy of a mention here, but just the scale up, the quality of teams we've built, the quality of integration and APIs, consumer journeys, market share are very, very positive.
Think continues to, so, like, you know, Kwik.ID , which is the video KYC product, continues to scale up with the PSU banks. Also, the good news is that we've won a panel by State Bank of India and should be able to go live with them. Think and Rep, as you know, won these insurance KYC contracts both from SBI General and Oriental Insurance. Oriental is now live, and that part is going well. They commenced an analytics transformation deal with Money control. And overall then, Algo360 had a start with Angel One. So sustained, I would say, client-level movement at the across products.
Of course, continue to stay focused on building the team and making sure that the partnership with CAMS and various subsidiaries of CAMS will lead to meaningful expansion and purpose. I will pause there and then hand over to Ramcharan to speak a little about the financials.
Thank you, Anuj. I'll just take a couple of minutes to go through the rough financial numbers and the trends. As you would have noted, the AUM grew significantly year-on-year by about 33%. So the overall revenue tracked that. Overall revenue grew by around 25% for the quarter, INR 310 crore, out of which INR 269 crore was MF revenue, again, grew by around 21%, tracking the growth in AUM. And the good AUM was that the equity actually grew disproportionately to the overall growth. So we had almost a 50% growth in equity AUM, which is beneficial to us. So tracking that, the revenue, mutual fund revenue, as well as overall revenue, grew by 25% and 21% respectively.
Out of this, the asset-based revenue grew by around 20% year-over-year, and sequentially by 6%. The non-asset-based revenue, which is predominantly one third of that, is the transaction revenue, and then the application revenue, the call center and the receivables. That grew very well to around 28%, which is kind of higher than what we've seen in the earlier quarters. So overall, you know, from an MF perspective, a 21% growth track the increase in AUM, as well as some increase in the transaction revenue and the call center revenue. The non-MF revenue has been a sweet story for us. You know, as Anuj was mentioning, the growth has been significant. It's been 52% growth year-over-year and even on a sequential basis, 13% growth.
The strategies that we put in place a couple of years back are starting to play out in actual number terms. Even eliminating things for a moment, because it was an acquisition between the years, the non-MF revenue has grown 38%. This is driven by growth across the spectrum. It is not limited to one sector, which is AIFs. AIFs has grown by around 24%, Pay by 24%, and KRA by 90%. So across all, the investments that we have made, you know, the growth has been seen, which is heartening to see, given that it's not restricted to one area. So the non-MF growth, you know, over and above the base of MF. MF has grown, you know, 21%, but non-MF has grown 52%.
So which means that overall, the share of non-MF is at 13.5%. This is what is on the initial slides. It has gone up from 11 to 13.5 on a year-on-year basis, so that's 250 basis points up, on the back of a huge growth in the AUM and AUM revenue also. So it is very credible from our perspective. From the yields, you know, the yields have broadly been in line with, probably on the lower end of what we expected, but have probably been in line with the growth in AUM. We do not see a big disruption happening or depletion happening in the yields going forward. What you will see is what we guided last quarter, because continue to see some depletion because of the telescopic pricing and probably minor price adjustments.
But no big disruption or depletion in yield is seen over the next few quarters. So that's from a revenue perspective. It has been a very strong performance from a profit, EBITDA, PBT, PAT, and operating EBITDA. 46.1 is the highest we have seen in the last 2 years. It's up 220 basis points year-on-year. So not only have you seen the margin grow in terms of absolute numbers, the margin has also expanded in terms of the percentage. So 220 basis points up year-on-year to 46.1%. And even on a quarter-on-quarter basis, we've seen more than 100 basis points uptick in the operating EBITDA. So INR 140 crore is the you know highest that we have seen in terms of EBITDA numbers for the company.
Going forward, you know, we see that there'll be some, there could be some moderation because of, you know, the annual appraisal cycle coming in in April. However, you know, we will look to mitigate it to the maximum possible extent. However, 46.1 is probably the higher end of what we will expect going forward. There could be some moderation in the next quarter or two because of the salary impact. However, we will work to kind of keep it within range around 45-46%. From a PBT, again, we've seen a big increase in the margins and a 350 basis points up year-on-year, and 200 basis points up, you know, quarter-on-quarter to 41.9%.
The PAT for the quarter, for the first time, we crossed the INR 100 crore number, of, you know, it's INR 103.5 crores of PAT, so very healthy, 32.2%. PAT is up almost 39% year-on-year and 16% quarter-on-quarter. So again, a very strong growth that we have seen in profit, higher than what we've seen in the revenue numbers, which is again pointing out to a good cost control and the operating leverage that we are seeing. The return on net worth was around 47%, again very high on a quarter-on-quarter basis, and we ended the quarter and the year with a very comfortable cash and cash equivalent position of around INR 618 crores of cash.
The board was pleased to recommend a dividend of INR 16.5, which will be taken up by the shareholders for final approval at the AGM in July. Overall, it is a strong quarter. Even if you see the trend that has been there, published in the earnings presentation, you will see for the last two years, there has been a consistent increase in the margins, starting with the 41% we saw in FY 2023 Q1, to 46.1% that we are seeing now. So it's been kind of an increase across two years to the margin profile to what we are seeing now. So here, I just spend a minute or two on the yearly numbers.
You know, we ended the year with INR 1,136 crore overall revenue number, which is up 17% year-on-year. This is up INR 165 crore in overall revenue, which is a very healthy growth year. And we've seen the last couple of quarters have actually accelerated this growth, you know, when you compare to the first two quarters. So we are on a good wicket on that. And overall, MF has grown by INR 115 crore, which is, you know, again, very healthy. And non-MF, even on a year-on-year basis, has grown by 51%, which is we are at almost INR 150 crore of non-MF revenue, driven by across all sectors, which is AIF, payments, KRA and the software businesses.
Everything has grown more than 25% or close to that, to ensure that overall non-MF growth comes to around 51%. The annual profits also, again, very healthy. We have entered the year with a, with a PAT, PAT of around INR 353 crore, a margin of, you know, 30%, which was around 28.5% the last year. So the story has been strong revenue growth, mutual fund driven by assets, yield broadly holding in line. Non-MF growing, you know, very high to 50+% year-on-year in growth, and the profit margins reflecting a good control over expenses as well as operating leverage, bringing very, very healthy numbers of 46.1%.
This is a snapshot of the financial numbers for the quarter and for the year. I will just hand it back to the moderator, Neha, and she can open it up for questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking the question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Supratim Datta from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you all for the opportunity. I have two questions, particularly on your Insurance Repository business and the KRA business. So on the Insurance Repository business, you know, you talk about, you know, how the current regulations do not mandate Demat, you know, storing policies in Demat account. Just wanted to understand then, how will you drive, you know, consumers towards, you know, moving away from PDF copies towards, you know, EIA accounts? You know, how would this journey be facilitated by a player like CAMS? Or, you know, it has to be facilitated by the insurance companies, in which case, you know, this could take longer to happen, you know, the transition from PDFs to EIA accounts. That's the first question.
The second question on the KRA business, you know, we understand that recently the government has opened up the APY business to other players as well beyond Protean. So just wanted to understand, how do you see the opportunity in this business, you know, and you know, how do you look at scaling that up? You know, those are my two quick questions. Thank you.
Sure. Thanks, Supratim. So on the first part-
... Think of it this way, that any digital issuance or electronic issuance of policy, like an attachment to an email or a digital locker, et cetera, does not have the intelligence that a EIA account has. So, for example, you can have a single EIA account, and within that, all the policies can be managed together, which means you can manage your metadata, which is your contact details, name, address, all of that. You make a single change, it flows to all the policies, and then it flows back into your insurance records, which is not how a PDF attachment works. That is just a PDF dump, PDF attachment you'll have to store somewhere. But more than that, as you scale up, can you set reminders for payments of, you know, insurance premium?
Can you pay an insurance premium through the EIA? The answer is yes. Can you set up reminders? The answer is yes. Over a period of time, can you make claims through this utility? The answer is yes. Whenever statute allows today, digital lien marking is not allowed in insurance. It is allowed in, in MF and in the securities market, it is allowed, not in the insurance market. Whenever that happens, you know that a large part of the market borrows money to pay their premiums, which means you have an annual premium due on first of June and May, you just borrow against your policy, where you have, let's say, a surrender value of INR 10 lakh. That kind of thing is still done on paper.
To facilitate all of those things, and today, you know, in the securities markets, very elegant APIs are available, where in 3 or 4 minutes you can get, you know, lien marking done, identification of assets, and then the limit is made available to you or the money lands up in your bank account. All that is not available in insurance. So those things can only happen through the EIA account. Think of it as exactly the mirror image of what happens in the demat account, the securities demat account. So, the advantages are legendary and are fairly significant, and consumers will start adopting. But to create financial infrastructure, what do you need? First of all, each one of us should have an EIA account, and I'm very sure that amongst the people on this call, everyone will not have.
We should have moved the policies there. And the third is that all the insurance sector participants, largely insurance companies, should be on a seamless data exchange, just like today the mutual fund companies are, the RTAs are, and the depositories are. That's journey to be undertaken. Will not take very long, will not take, I don't think it'll take five or six years, may take a couple of years. As that happens, the significant advantage of EIA will get established. That's part one of the, that's what the first of your questions.
The second is that on the KRA, there's this policy class, which is APY or the Atal Pension Yojana, which has been eyeballed for quite some time now by the regulator, in terms of allowing the CRAs to participate. They have made formal notification recently. It is a mass-market product. It is consumed in large numbers, but of course, the pricing, et cetera, is very, very thin. Like, you know, in most of these markets, pricing is thin, but this is significantly thin because it is permitted as a social advantage delivery to a certain pop fraction of our population. So we are excited. We are excited that APY is opening up.
We have the capability because all of that is, is a base requirement to you getting the license, so we have the capability to participate. And, we will soon begin participating. How the numbers will pan out, how do you penetrate this market, et cetera, et cetera, will, will become visible in a period of time. But yeah, it's a great announcement, and we are excited by it.
Okay, just one question over here. So could you get the existing customers who would already be on APY with Protean? Could you get a share within that existing customer base? Or is it mostly in the incremental new customers? Will you be getting the share?
So what happens is that, inter KRA capabilities, or switch is available as a part of the architecture. Just like you've seen in mobile number portability, et cetera, most consumers do not switch. So getting consumers to switch to build a marketplace isn't an easy task and isn't perhaps the cornerstone of your strategy. Selling new is, so that's how this market will also progress.
Understood. And just one last question on the MF business. So just wanted to understand that, you know, like, going into FY 25, are there any major contracts which are coming up for renegotiation?
So, like, you know, typically these contracts hold out for three, four or five years, some for two. So there are there are some contracts where the dialogue is undergoing, which were due either on first January or first of April. And we're in the process of, you know, speaking to the clients and then settling down on a on a price regime which will hold out for the future. So there there are a set of clients.
Understood. Understandable. Can you quantify, you know, what would, what would be the share of AUM or the number of client contracts that would be up for renegotiation?
So, so I'll, I'll just say a couple of things on this. Yes, there is a cycle, right? So if you have 20 customers, you would assume that every year, at least four or five will come up for renewal. So I don't think this year is going to be any different, given that, you know, we enter into this renewal at different periods of time. So nothing extraordinary from that perspective. The one thing that I will add is that, you know, it's not going to be something that's going to be a steep kind of a discount or giveaway, given that, you know, a lot of these customers have reached a stage-
... where the marginal cost for them is actually not huge, right? While there could be some impact that they would have on the TER ratios and all that stuff. But what we expect is a moderate kind of impact on all these things. And I don't think this will disturb the usual formula of AUM growth, that is, AUM fee growth that we have been used to. The only thing that I will say is that this is a routine development that keeps happening every year. Nothing, you know, exceptional is expected on this.
Understood. That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all the participants, please limit your questions to two per participant. The next question is from the line of Devesh Agarwal from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead.
Good morning, sir, and many congratulations on great set of numbers. My first question is on the mutual fund business. We see that there is a 2.3% sequential decline in the yields for a 10% growth in the AUM. This is despite the 200 basis point increase in the equity share of the AUM. Just wanted to understand better, is this, you think, the new normal run rate for a 10% increase in the AUM that we should expect? Or were there any adjustment in fourth Q that led to a slightly higher moderation in the yields?
So, Devesh, I will answer that question. No, there was no adjustment or anything that happened. You know, we've seen that in fact, the earlier quarter you saw more than normal kind of AUM fee growth to AUM growth. It was kind of almost like 90+% . Some quarters, depending on which customer grows from a scale perspective, there will be some adjustments. Just it is on the lower side of our expectation in terms of what the yield will be, but not very different from what you would see. If you see AUM growth to AUM fee growth, we are again minus plus 60+% in terms of this. I, the 70% is the normal. So I don't think that we need to make any adjustment on our assumptions.
I think going forward, what we have projected in terms of AUM to AMC growth, ± a few percentage, will play out. You'll see that in Q1 also. So no adjustment is needed, and, it's not as if a big, price reduction was given or, or something happened in the last quarter. It's more kind of, growth that's happened in some of the scale customers, which marginally adds a lesser yield to us. I don't think that's an anomaly, so the period of time has been our experience. So no, no major change in assumptions is actually needed for this one.
Understood, sir. And second is, within the mutual fund, non-asset-based revenue has been growing in line with the asset-based revenues, at least for the FY 2024. So do you expect this to continue, that the growth in the non-asset-based revenues will be similar to what we are seeing in asset base? Or this is expected to slow down, given that, there's an increase in digitization of transactions and the revenues from paper-based will go down?
So, Devesh, there are four aspects in this non-AMC, right? One is the transaction fee, which has been going up. But we see that overall the percentage of it stays static, right? It's between 8%-11% of paper transactions still continue to come, and in absolute numbers, they are not going down at all. But there are other components of this also, which is the call center, which is kind of, you know, more and more agents do get added. And then there is this entire miscellaneous and application fee. As we kind of broaden our base, we have more and more people subscribing to our applications, to our APIs, et cetera, which is a part of this.
And then there's the out-of-pocket expenses, which never goes down, because always there is an increase in the volume of transactions which is into it, right? For example, you'll never stop, you'll never send lesser SMSs or emails or lesser portals when required by law, et cetera. So, while I do, you know, understand that the growth this quarter has been a little higher than what we are used to, I don't see any big moderation happening in the growth, given that the paper transactions continue to be at the range 1 in terms of the populated total transactions. And the other component of this non-asset-based revenue being on an upward trajectory, even when the digitalization happens, because it's not related to that application.
Understood. And, then my last question would be on the non-mutual fund business. Again, we have seen a very healthy growth, especially in the fourth quarter. So one, wanted to understand, what would be the, segments which will see the maximum growth in FY 25, and also your thoughts around, growth through acquisition, given that both Fintuple and Think360 have been good acquisition for us. So what are the areas that we will target, which, which are kind of, growth through acquisition for inorganic growth? Yeah, that is my last question. Thank you.
Sure, Devesh. So if you see last year, which is FY 2024, what added to the momentum of nominal growth is, KRA is the biggest engine, Pay is the second, and AIF is the third. And I think in this year, I'm expecting the same to happen, which means these three will re-remain the engines which will drive the growth. Account Aggregator as a fourth engine was great in percentage growth, but the base is so small that, absolute growth at company level has not been impacted. I'm expecting that in FY 2025, Account Aggregators will also start making its presence felt in terms of, you know, making at least some increment, to company financials. Very small, but, but it will do that. So think of it as pay , KRA and AIF from the lead Account Aggregator somewhere there.
So then what it leads to, two franchises. One is insurance, where we've said that while environmentally everything sounds very good, the exact niche to enter and then start scaling the adoption of EIA is perhaps still not 100% clear in the market. There's lot of feedback with everyone.
... You're holding on to a large share, but, absolute growth in terms of, you know, policies and EIA accounts, et cetera, is still a moderate number. So something has to happen materially, either Bima Central becomes a large franchise, adoption is very great, or, you know, consumers wake up and they want to start adopting EIA accounts. That's one part which can play out, and Think360 is the other one, which can also play out. Fintuple is a small constituent, but like I said, is doing some very meaningful work. So when you look at MF plus six, which is non-MF of these, six constituents, I think Pay, KRA, AIFs , as the three leaders, Account Aggregator coming as the fourth driving the engine.
And then, between insurance Repository and Think, where the percentage growth wasn't very high last year, if they, you know, are able to kind of do the penetration and scale up, then we could have them also participating. But the first three really will continue to lead the charge. That was the first part of your question. The second, you asked about, acquisitions and whether we have an intention, or whether we are shortlisting things. So yes, we are looking at the market. As usual, finding a good candidate in a good segment is always our intention. I can also tell you that while, Fintuple was largely on the alternative side, working with custodians and with the AIFs and PMSs, Think's core franchise is more on the lending side, not so much on the capital markets.
We believe that a good target could come out of payments and insurance, and more than that, I don't have much to share, because we haven't really thought sharper than that. We continue to scan the market all the time. But I believe between payments and insurance, it could be a nice segment for us to think of the next target company. When and how we will update you whenever that happens.
Got you. Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhijeet Sakhare from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good morning. Question on expense growth. You know, last year we delivered about 15%. So looking forward to your FY 25, how should we think about it? You know, I mean, part of it will obviously be driven by the revenue growth that we're able to achieve, but anything that's already kind of committed and part of the investment pipeline?
So, Abhijeet, yes, we do not. Two things. One is that I indicated earlier, which is that a usual increase in salaries and, given the market and given the technology focus that we have, will continue to happen. You know, that's, you know, that's a given in terms of what we do. So, overall expense growth, I think last time it was around, you know, 18% is what, including, 15% in terms of, year-on-year. I do not foresee that the expense growth will be much larger than this. We do not have. You know, we continue to invest in the products. As I said, the run rate is around INR 7 crore quarter is what we invest in the new platforms.
We don't see that changing drastically, either upwards or downwards, in terms of what we invest. Obviously, the revenue that's coming out of it is next to nil, a few quarters back, it's now ramping up. So that will have a beneficial impact, but from an expense perspective, I don't think we're gonna come down on our investments or moderate that to any extent. So I don't think that you will see any different in terms of, different in terms of expense growth, for the next year, for your projections. More exceptional expenses are being planned as of now from a revenue perspective. If and when there is some, you know, some concrete plan on re-architecting platforms, et cetera, we will come back with a, a proper explanation for that.
And that will be for more kind of a long-term, you know, platform building, not a short-term, you know, operating expenses kind of a ramp-up that you will see. So the short answer is, we don't expect exceptional expenses coming up for the next year, and it'll be in line with what you're seeing now. Obviously, you know, as we go along, we might see some strains on salary cost or we might moderate salary cost. That depends on how the market is, but overall, not much of a difference.
Understood. And one data question: What's the current headcount, and if you can split it up between MF and non-MF business? Thank you.
Yeah. The current headcount is around 7,800. This includes around 1,200 people in the front office for MF and around 2,500 people in the back office for MF. Then that includes around 800 technology-related resources, and then there are about 100 in risk and compliance, and the rest are split into corporate support, the new businesses that we are into in terms of the... Rep will have around 100 people, Repository will have around 250 people, KRA will have 150 people, so that is where it gets split into.
I'm done. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prayesh Jain from Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Congratulations on a great set of numbers. Firstly, on the margin front, what would you attribute more to, and if you could, you know, give some granularity as to, how much of the increase in margins is coming in from, the new businesses, and, how much is from the scale, scale-up in the MF business? You know, so some understanding as to when that will help us think about the margins in FY 25 and beyond, as to, you know, how should we kind of think about margins where, you know, did mention about, you know, the cost and your, you'll be able to maintain margins between 45%-46%.... but, you know, if you could help us understand the quality of margins between the MF and the non-MF business, that would be helpful.
Just in that context, you know, it would be great if you could start sharing some information on the subsidiaries on a quarterly level in terms of profitability. That's just a feedback. Yeah. That would be my first question.
Oh, thanks, Prayesh. We've taken that feedback. I'll just, you know, we do track some of this. I'll just give a caveat that, you know, all the non-MF businesses are not homogeneous, and they don't follow the same pattern in terms of market, pricing, target markets, et cetera, revenue model, et cetera. But then, just for the ease of understanding, I'll kind of put it into MF and non-MF buckets. We have seen a creep up in the margins of non-MF, given that, you know, the platform businesses, as they are predominantly are all platform businesses. We've seen, you know, what used to be a 15% kind of overall EBITDA level across our businesses has now crept up to more than 20%.
We still feel that there is room for growth on that, and we think the steady state is probably close to 35%-40%, given the nature of these businesses, but it will take time to come there. But we've seen a good growth from an overall perspective from the non-MF business also. But the bulk of the margin increase is flowing from the mutual fund business. What you see is obviously earlier it used to be a depletion in margins because of the non-MF business. What we are seeing now, they are also starting to contribute incrementally to the margin growth, and hence we don't see this reversing.
The only reason why I kind of wanted to moderate, and Anuj also mentioned this earlier, to moderate the expectations for the next quarter or two, is the annual cycle that comes from the salary increase. So traditionally, our impact has been about a couple of percentage on the sales, that has been the impact on the salary appraisal. Obviously, we will try to mitigate that to the extent possible with productivity increases and automation, et cetera. But the caveat has always been that in a quarter or the next quarter or two, you might see some moderation in margins, but I feel that the steady-state margin that will be around 45%. In a good quarter, it comes to 46%, in a bad quarter, it will be a couple of, you know, basis points less than that.
But that's the range one number that we are seeing. On your subsidiary performance and profit margin, we have considered that feedback, and we will kind of definitely consider that while publishing the results for the next quarter.
Thanks. And now, coming to the AIF business, you know, and that has been one of our key focus areas and drivers. What I look at is quarterly, that is, on a sequential basis, there is no major increase in revenues. That is the way we calculate it is, you know, the on whatever percentage share you give, we calculate the numbers applying that to the total revenues. From that, I'm seeing that the revenues are kind of flattish, right? Sequentially. Why would that happen in a market where, you know, equities have done well and AIFs would have done well? So, you know, any or any thoughts there?
Prayesh, I think we have grown reasonably well quarter-on-quarter. I think even the last quarter, I think we grew on a quarter-on-quarter basis 5%, which is, which is, I think, a decent number to grow. The nature of business is that you will have to keep replenishing the business as and when the funds' lives go away. I think we're doing a decent job of that, and we have the new lines coming in, in terms of the WealthTrak and the Wealth Serv, with onboarding as well as the analytics module. And GIFT City, you know, there are a lot of sign-ups have happened, but the ramp-up in business is expected, you know, to start off shortly. So I think we are doing decently well on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
We only expect the strategy to be higher as we go forward, as you know, the products that we have launched become more industrialized in terms of adoption. Actually, the GIFT City revenue going up, which we have a lot of sign-ups in the GIFT City, but I think for the actual operations to start will take some time. So I think we are maybe should be good wicket on that.
But isn't this would be the revenues wouldn't be linked to AUM growth in this business too?
So most of our billing is, actually less than 25% is AUM-based billing. Most of the billing is dependent on the number of investors who are onboarded to a particular scheme, which is the way that the customers are moving towards. I know the competition has got a different view on this, but what we are seeing in the market is that, the customers are preferring or in fact, are insisting that the revenue, for the RTA be linked to the number of investors being serviced rather than the AUM. And, we feel that that's also reasonable, given the nature of the AIF business, given the large ticket sizes and one-time brought on and, you know, investor servicing requirements being, tied to that rather than to a commitment or AUM. So that's the way the revenue model is developing in AIF.
Last question on the cash state. What would be your current cash position, and is there any... So the entire cash would be available to shareholders, right? And what, what would be the plans to utilize the same? That would be my last question.
The closing cash position we had on 31st March was INR 617 crore. This is before the recommended dividend. The dividend, I think the board recommended INR 16.5 per share. That's, if the shareholders do approve that, it becomes a payout around INR 80-81 crore. So if you even after that, you know, we will have excess of, INR 525-530 crore of cash on the books. There is some minimum net worth requirements for specific businesses. You know, it could be INR 25 crore for the Pay business. It's probably little less for the RTA businesses. But, you know, keeping all those things aside, the cash position is extremely comfortable and surplus.
Anuj was mentioning this earlier, you know, that, that there is, we are on, you know, scanning the, scanning the ecosystem for possible inorganic growth opportunities. So one possible use of the cash is when we arrive at a candidate for this inorganic growth. Another part, again, the board will take a call on whether that's an appropriate, you know, way to move forward for us. But for that, the entire cash is definitely available for the shareholders, barring some minimum net worth requirements for the individual businesses.
... and the use will be dividend and more dividend, and, if at all, we desire an inorganic acquisition, which generally we are looking out for, that will be the better, better use for the cash that we have.
Got that. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dipanjan Ghosh from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, sir. Just a few questions from my side. You know, first, going back to the AIF segment, you know, you obviously don't give the number of investors in your disclosures, and AUM is the only data point that we get. On that, you know, over the last, you know, let's say first half versus third quarter versus fourth quarter, we have seen some increase in yields if I calculate revenue versus dips of AUM. Now, is it a function of new clients getting onboarded or the wealth of platforms on the modules, digital onboarding modules, that you have kind of maybe sold to your customers?
So just wanted to get a sense of what is the recurring, sort of revenues growth in this segment versus, let's say, if there is any one-off, sort of upfront income that you're booking because of this rapid growth in the new clientele that you're onboarding. Second, you know, as you kind of correctly alluded, that your competition has taken a different view on this segment. So from a structural perspective, do you really see pricing being stable in this segment, or should... or can one see some amount of volatility out there? Second question will be on the entire non-MF businesses. I know you alluded to the fact that, you know, first movers in this segment obviously have some advantages in terms of both client recognition and trust.
Having said that, you also alluded to the fact that, it can be replicated over a period of time from, by competitors. Now, given that some of the segments are quite nascent and maybe not duopolistic in nature, you know, whatever pricing you're seeing in any of these non-MF businesses, is it sustainable from a perpetual perspective, or can there be some amount of volatility? Lastly, two data-giving questions. One is, if you can give your KRA revenue mix for FY 2024 as a percentage of your... Sorry, for FY 2023, as a percentage of your overall revenues. And the second will be the 7,800 employee base, if you can just split it between permanent and contractual.
Okay. So that's quite a few questions. I'm just thinking which order to answer them in. But let me just take your question on non-MF and non-duopolistic markets. And that is true, that across these markets, pricing plays out in a very different way. There are one or two markets where you could have a base pricing or more uniform pricing. KRA is one example, where there is a set of three or four participants, and therefore, selling on price hasn't been an endemic feature of that marketplace. That marketplace can be counted as a stable marketplace, despite having several competitors.
But if you go anywhere else, if you go to Repository, where the price of converting a policy or the annual maintenance is perhaps half to one-third of what it used to be 5 years back. If you see Account aggregator, where the price of a single data pull is half to one-third to one-fourth, and sometimes lesser of what it used to be at one time. And if you take payments, where as the ticket size falls, you know, the 2 or 3 INR per trigger, that is the standard price, we try to accommodate our clients. Let's say if somebody is launching a 100 INR SIP collection or even smaller ones, we do accommodate. So therefore, not that in the MF RTA business, there is some great advantage of price.
You have seen that, despite being a two-player market, we do see a bit of price erosion. In the others, I think they are as competitive markets as you've seen anywhere else. And for a lot of them, pricing is perhaps getting to a stable place. Because if you see a , pricing is perhaps, you know, sub 2 INR, at times 1 INR per folio. If you see policy conversion and maintenance, which used to be upwards of 10 INR, there are cases where it could get sold for half the price. And that is true of payments, too. So we don't worry too much about predatory pricing, because a lot of these competitors are stable, which means that one guy trying to just gain share basis, asymmetry in price is something we don't see often.
Prices have, in general, you know, as consumption goes up, prices grind down. We've seen that in all these three markets. So AA is a new market, we've seen that. Rep is a stable market, more than 10 years old, we've seen that, and so is payments. So I don't think there is cause to worry about pricing depletion as one force of nature which is gonna hit us in the face. It is something that we deal with it every day, every month. It's like, you know, for biscuit manufacturers or for car manufacturers. It perhaps behaves the same way. The threats are the same, the opportunities are the same. We have a stated position of not being a price player, so that is one thing we do not sell unless it's a relationship deal or a client we really want to be with.
We don't sell price. What our competition does is obviously evident to you. A lot of them are listed, and therefore you see how they strategize in the markets. So that's how I would answer your question number three. I'm thinking of. ...
So on your question on AIF, it is, well, almost all the revenue is annuity in nature. It's not as if there is a one-time revenue that we book. There is some amount of implementation for the onboarding platform, but that's insignificant when compared to the overall revenue. And even in WealthServ, not only do we have an implementation cost, we also have an AMC cost that we bill. So, it's not some one-time revenue that's booked to ensure, you know, that is kind of causing the increase in the yield of growth that you're seeing. It's kind of what happens is, the funds' life will fall off and new funds will get launched. So if at all there is some fluctuations in the revenue, it will be because of the life of the fund and not because of our billing model.
And, we continue to see, I know, whatever, may be plus or minus, I think on the assets we see around 1.5 bps of, you know, yield that we continue to see across a, you know, reasonable period of time, but it might vary from one quarter to another quarter. Again, that's not how we build, but, you know, just for reference, you can probably have that as the number. From, I think you also asked revenue of 7,800 employees and how many are... I think we have a policy that most of the employees are in-house. We have, less than 500 people who are probably vendor staff and all those things.
So, most of the employees are on roll and, on the roll of CAMS or its subsidiaries, and that's the split that we have. KRA 2020-2023 revenue, I think in some more detail, I can probably share the detail with you, you know, in terms of how the revenue was ramped up. But suffice to say that, to this year has been exceptional in terms of revenue growth with a 90% growth, and our strategy has also changed on that. But, the exact revenue on 2020, 2021, 2020-2023, I will probably share with you separately.
Just, just one small follow-up. This, employee number of 7,800, what would it be in 2023, last year?
We have added on average around 550 headcount over the year-on-year basis.
Got it.
When I say average, I mean for average for the period, it's not, start to end.
Got it. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take this as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Ramcharan, sir, please, for the closing comments.
Thank you, Neha, and we thank all the participants for taking time to be a part of this earnings call, and your continuing interest in CAMS is appreciated. In case of any questions, please do reach out to Orient Capital or Anish Sawlani in investor relations in CAMS, and they will be happy to respond. Thanks once again for your time, and hoping to stay in touch and engaged.
Thank you. On behalf of Computer Age Management Services Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.